


How (not) to Cope with Your Birthday

by Ajichu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Keith (Voltron) Has BPD, Mental Illness, birthday fic, the klance is minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 10:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10489029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ajichu/pseuds/Ajichu
Summary: Keith was struggling to keep it together. That stupid Earth-calendar Pidge had made was going to be the death of him. He had made a point to not tell anyone his birthday because he thought that meant no one would forget that it was his birthday, and he wouldn't be able to get upset.Boy was he fucking wrong.CHECK THE NOTES FOR TRIGGER WARNINGS





	

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Self-Destructive Behavior, Disordered Eating, Bad Mental Stuff In General  
> I don't really go into depth on any of this stuff but it's there, so tread carefully.
> 
> all of these birthday announcements for the paladins made me want to do something with Keith's birthday. so I basically gave him my birthday problems and wrote a fic about it, so this is a little bit of a vent. enjoy!

 

Keith awoke slowly, glancing to the clock beside his bed. The team had finally convinced Coran to let Hunk re-program the clocks to display the time in numbers they could recognize instead of Altean symbols. Therefore, Keith knew that it was 2:12 AM castle-time, and that he had barely gotten four hours of sleep. He also knew, without needing to look at the date, that it was his least favorite day of the year.

Sighing heavily, Keith got out of bed. It was always impossible to get back to sleep once he woke up, no matter how much he wanted to sleep through this day in particular. Also, especially because of what day it was, there was an intense buzz of anxiety settled into his chest that destroyed the already miniscule chance he had of getting more rest. If he had to be awake, he might as well do something productive. 

Training until he passed out was totally “something productive,” so he changed out of his everyday clothes and into something looser and more comfortable. That way he could at least pretend to be looking after himself if someone came to talk to him.

Exiting his room, Keith started towards the kitchen to get some breakfast, but decided against it. Eating didn’t really seem like a luxury he should allow himself, today. Besides, if he was starving, maybe he would pass out faster. So he changed course and headed straight towards the training deck. The hallways were eerily silent, with the lights dimmed to simulate nighttime, and Keith  _ wasn’t  _ afraid of monsters in the dark, but he walked faster anyways.

He entered the training deck, quickly closing the door behind him and setting his bayard to the side. Maybe he would use it later, but for now he wanted to hit the gladiators with his bare hands. The anxious buzz in his chest only seemed to grow more intense. Keith inhaled and exhaled slowly. It didn’t help.

Keith was struggling to keep it together. That stupid Earth-calendar Pidge had made was going to be the death of him. For some reason, he had been stupid enough to look at it when Pidge was showing it off to everyone. Which meant he had known what day it was, which started the terrible countdown in his head. The team had even gone so far as to install the calendar on all of the tablets that they had, displaying the date every time someone used theirs. He tried to avoid looking at the date, but he was only a man, and he had trouble with impulse control. In an attempt to salvage what remained of his mental health, he had made a point to not tell anyone his birthday because he thought that meant no one would forget that it was his birthday, and he wouldn't be able to get upset.

Keith didn’t actually care that much about parties or presents. They weren’t super important to him. Especially because when he  _ did  _ get presents, it was usually junk that he didn’t even want. However, that didn’t stop him from having an emotional breakdown every year without fail when no one did anything for his birthday. Except for the two he had spent alone in the desert. There he had no one, so he didn’t get upset about people forgetting his birthday. Because there was no one to forget. Or it might have been because he was almost completely detached from himself when he was in the desert.

Either way, trying to carry over the same concept to Voltron obviously didn’t work. Maybe it would have if he had kept his distance from the team, but it was impossible to keep his distance from Shiro, and he was slowly getting more and more attached to Lance. After a while the other boy had sort of dropped the “rivals” act, and treated Keith more like a teammate. And then more like a friend. And then more like… something more? He wasn’t exactly sure what Lance was trying to do, because Keith wasn’t good at reading that sort of stuff in the first place, and it didn’t help that Lance also jokingly flirted with everyone.

That whole ordeal aside, keeping his birthday a secret didn’t fix his problem. So he would fix it by overworking himself until he passed out, and then he would sleep through the rest of this terrible day. It was the only logical solution.

Keith stepped out to the middle of the room and dropped into a fighting stance.

“Start training sequence, level ten.”

~

Lance groaned loudly for the second time in the past minute. “When is he gonna be here? It’s been hours! We didn’t even need to get up early to set this up! I could’ve slept in!” He batted irritably at one of the balloons that was tied to the back of the empty chair next to him.

Pidge looked up from where she was resting her head on the dining area table, peering at him over the cake that sat in the center. “Lance, you know that Keith is usually up and running around at like four in the morning. We couldn’t risk him walking in on us setting up.”

“I know that! But he didn’t! It’s almost nine and we haven’t seen him at all! I totally could’ve slept in and it would’ve been fine.”

“I’m actually starting to get worried about him,” Shiro cut in, “I don’t think he’s ever slept in this late.”

“He’s probably just brooding and cleaning his knife or something.” Lance sighed and stood up. “I’ll go look for him, say that we’re doing a mission briefing over breakfast to get him here. I’ll let you guys know over the comms when I’m on the way back.”

He strolled out of the dining area and headed towards Keith’s room. Lance was actually really worried about him as well. They shared a wall, so Lance usually heard Keith when he got up every morning (he had been banned from sleeping with his headphones on after a few too many missed drills). So, Lance had heard Keith tossing and turning and most definitely not sleeping last night, which was very unusual. The other boy didn’t sleep a lot, but when he did he slept like a rock. 

Keith had still been making noise when Lance got up at 2 AM to start setting up in the dining area, but maybe he had finally gotten to sleep. So he wasn’t really worried about Keith being late, he was just worried about why he was having so much trouble getting to sleep. Maybe Lance would ask about it later, after the party. With that resolution, he arrived at Keith’s door and knocked. A minute passed with no response, so Lance knocked again with a, “Hey, Keith, buddy, you awake?”

There was still no answer, so Lance pressed the button on the panel next to Keith’s door to open it. It wasn’t locked, which was confusing until Lance saw that the room was empty. He pressed a finger to his ear, un-muting his mobile comm unit.

“Hey guys, Keith’s room is empty.”

He heard Hunk make a distressed noise, “Oh my god, what if he’s dead.”

“I doubt that he’s dead, Hunk,” Shiro replied.

“Yeah, if he were dead, his body would be in his room. Which it’s not.” Lance said in a joking tone.

It did nothing to ease Hunk’s nerves, who sounded even more upset, “What if I go to the bathroom and I find Keith’s dead body.”

“Keith’s  _ not _ dead, Hunk. Calm down.” Shiro said sternly. His tone softened as he continued. “But it is worrying that he’s up and hasn’t come to the kitchen yet. He usually doesn’t skip meals.”

“I’m sure he’s fine.” Lance said smoothly, attempting to calm his own growing anxiety along with everyone else’s. “I’m gonna check the training deck. That’s basically the only place I’ve seen Keith in during free time besides his room and the kitchen. I’ll keep you guys posted.” He muted the comms again and started towards the training deck, walking a little faster than he did before.

He arrived at the doors to the training deck a short few minutes later, and pressed his hand to the panel on the wall to open them. Sticking his head in, he called out, “Keeeeeeeeith~ Where are-” 

Lance’s words died in his throat as he caught sight of the scene in the training room. Keith was collapsed on the floor, with a significantly beefier-than-normal gladiator standing over him. He dropped into a dead sprint in Keith’s direction. As he got closer, Lance thanked god that there was a safety lock that kicked in if the person training fell unconscious (which only knows about from Allura sticking them into the invisible maze with a few gladiators), because Keith was bruised and bloody and would probably be dead if the gladiator had kept going.

Lance called out, “End training sequence!” with a shaky voice, and fell next to Keith as the gladiator dematerialized. His hands hovered anxiously over the fallen boy’s body, and even though he knew that the corruption had been completely removed from the castle and the gladiator would never actually kill anyone, he pressed his fingers to Keith’s neck and felt for a pulse anyways.

There was a pulse, but it was fast and weak. Lance let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and raised and trembling hand to his ear to unmute his comm.

“Uh, guys, I found Keith.” He let out a shaky laugh, and then continued, “But uh… he’s not in good shape. Can someone find Coran and tell him to get a healing pod ready?”

~

When Keith woke up, he immediately recognized two sensations: One, he was freezing cold, and two, he felt like he had been through a meat grinder. Everything ached like hell. As his brain started to regain functionality, he realized a few other things. He was laying down in a bed, but it wasn’t the one in his room. It was hard and uncomfortable and smelled… sterilized. The whole room seemed to smell like a hospital. A smell Keith was familiar with, due to his frequent trips to them when he was still on Earth.

He opened his eyes and saw that he was in the med bay. That explained the smell, and the uncomfortable bed. Immediately, he searched the room for a clock. He had to know if the day was over yet. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be one in the room. Not one that he could read, anyway. However, he did find something else: Lance, slumped over in a chair near his bed.

There was a datapad in Lance’s lap. Maybe he would know what time it was. Keith called out a quiet, “Lance?”

Despite the softness of his tone, Lance’s eyes immediately snapped open. Dazed from sleep, he looked confused for a second, before his gaze fell on Keith.

“Keith, you’re awake! Thank god, you have no idea how worried-”

Keith cut him off with a curt, “Do you know what time it is?”

Lance’s eyes shifted from relief to confusion at the question, but he complied and looked at his datapad. “It’s about 11 PM. Why-”

Keith cut him off again, this time with a loud groan. God damnit, he couldn’t even self-destruct properly. His only objective for the day had been to pass out long enough to get to tomorrow, but here he was, awaking once again to his birthday. He began to scratch at his arms in frustration, trying to hold back tears.

A pair of hands grabbed his forearms and roughly pinned them to the bed. Keith glared at Lance as he hovered over him, opting to clench his teeth and dig his fingernails roughly into his palms instead.

“Stop it, Keith! You just came out of the healing pod a few hours ago.”

Keith’s glare turned dark. “Let. Go.”

Lance’s stern gaze faltered for a second, but he furrowed his brow and said, “I’ll let go, but if you start hurting yourself again I’m calling Shiro,” before letting go of Keith and sitting back in his chair.

Keith huffed and crossed his arms, pointedly not looking at Lance but trying to keep his nails off his skin. He was still buzzing with frustrated energy though, and clenched and unclenched his fists in a steady rhythm instead.

They sat in silence for a while. Keith started to take deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself down. He knew Lance was just trying to help. He didn’t deserve Keith’s anger. After a few minutes he was significantly less upset, and turned to look at Lance expectantly.

Lance looked a little guilty. Seeing that Keith looked ready to talk to him, he said, “I’m sorry. I just… I freaked out a little when I found you half dead in the training room. It was scary. For a second I thought you might’ve actually been dead. I don’t… I don’t want to see you hurt like that again. Especially by your own hand.”

Keith’s face pinched in anger, and he let out a strained, “I understand.” 

The tears he had been trying to hold back before started falling. Not only had he failed to skip out on his least favorite day of the year, now Lance was upset, too. Why couldn’t he just go away and leave Keith alone? Lance probably hated him anyways. Practically vibrating with frustrated energy, he curled up into a ball and turned away again to hide his crying, unconsciously starting to dig his nails into his palms again.

“Keith,” Lance sounded really upset. Fuck, he was ruining everything. Everything was terrible and it was all his fault. “Why were you fighting such a high level gladiator? I know you like to push yourself but… Allura said it had been set to level ten? You only got to level four last week.” Lance was getting closer, he was going to see that Keith was crying and hate him even more. “Hey, Keith, are you okay?”

That broke the floodgates. Angry tears streamed down his face, and he spat out a venomous, “Today is my birthday!”

Keith looked up, expecting to see anger on Lance’s face as well, but he only saw shock and confusion. “I know? We planned a surprise party for you? You never showed up to breakfast, that's why I was…”

Lance trailed off, presumably because of the look of fear on Keith’s face. The team had tried to do something nice for him, and he ruined it. Just like he ruins everything. It wasn’t just Lance, the everyone in the castle must hate him. Tears flowing silently again, Keith buried his head in his knees and started pulling on his hair roughly.

“...‘m sorry.” was all Keith could mumble out through heavy, shuddering breaths. 

Uncertain, Lance hesitated for a moment before reaching out and touching Keith’s back lightly. The other boy flinched, but didn’t pull away, so Lance began to rub soothing circles on his back. Lance began speaking quietly, in a soothing voice, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not mad at you. None of us are mad at you. We’re all just really worried.”

Keith turned his head and shot Lance a red, wet glare. “H-how could you not b-be mad?”

He startled at the sudden glare, but quickly relaxed and began speaking. “Think about it Keith. You know how I act when I’m mad. Remember when I was mad at Coran for stealing my face mask to use as an ingredient for dinner? I refused to talk to him for _ two whole days _ . I wouldn’t be here talking to you if I was mad, right?”

Keith frowned and buried his face back into his arms. After a minute of quiet sniffling, he mumbled out, “...guess that makes sense.”

Despite the fact that Keith wouldn’t be able to see it, Lance smiled brightly. “See? So now that you know I’m not mad at you, do you wanna tell me why you were in the training room? You only have to talk about it if you’re comfortable though. I won’t be upset if you don’t tell me.”

“No… n-no I,” Keith lifted his head and tried to take a deep breath. While he was just about done sobbing, his body wasn’t fully recovered from it, so air entered his lungs in unsteady glups instead of one smooth inhale. “Jus- Just give me. A minute. Please.”

Lance nodded in understanding. “Okay. Would you like me to keep rubbing your back, or should I stop?”

Refusing to look at Lance, Keith softly said. “Don’t stop.” and after a moment of consideration, he added, “...please.”

Lance didn’t say anything, he just continued to gently rub circles on the other boy’s back. Gradually, Keith stopped shaking and his breathing evened out. 

After about 15 minutes of silence, Keith had composed himself enough to start speaking.

“Okay… so I’m- uh,” he paused and looked at Lance, “has Shiro like… told you anything? About my… situation, I guess?”

Lance nodded and looked up towards the ceiling, like he was trying to remember. “He explained that you have trouble with impulse control and self-destructive tendencies. He also said that you tend to assume that people think negatively of you.”

Keith was nervously fiddling with the blanket in his lap, now. “And that’s all he said?”

“Pretty much. He told us that if we wanted to know anything else that we would have to ask you. But he also said that he didn’t know why you were so upset today?”

With a shrug, Keith explained, “Yeah, he wouldn’t. This is the first time he’s… been around for my birthday. It’s not something that I like to talk about if I don’t need to.” He sighed and rubbed at his face, avoiding eye contact again. “So I have Borderline Personality Disorder, which Shiro knows about. Some of the symptoms are unstable moods, dangerous impulsive behavior, impaired social relationships, feelings of worthlessness… and I just- ugh!” 

Keith twisted the blanket violently in frustration. “I just hate my birthday because when people forget it, it feels like they’re forgetting about me! I feel worthless on a normal day, but on a day when  _ I’m _ apparently supposed to be the focus, it’s a million times worse. And what’s stupid about it is that I don’t even care about my birthday that much! I know that it’s just another day! But that doesn’t make me feel any less terrible when it rolls around.” His voice got quiet again. “I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

Lance waited a moment to make sure Keith was done, and replied softly, “It’s not stupid if it makes you upset, Keith. No matter how irrational the reason might seem, your emotions are valid.”

Scowling, Keith grumbled, “Yeah, okay. Anyways. I was in the training room trying to work out my emotions or whatever. I thought if I didn’t eat breakfast I would pass out faster. I couldn’t sleep the normal way so I figured I’d try to force it.”

That was certainly concerning to hear. With a kind of sad expression, Lance said, “You know you can always come talk to any of us, right? If anything, you could’ve gone to Shiro.”

Keith snorted. “Yeah, that’s really useful to tell me now.” Then he frowned. “I didn’t think any of you would care. Like, how annoying would it be for me to just say, ‘Hey I irrationally hate my birthday, so could you spend the whole day paying attention to me so I don’t have an emotional breakdown? Except I might just have one anyways because my brain is garbage? Thanks!’”

While Lance fumbled for a response to that, Keith heaved a deep sigh. “I know. Like, logically, I know you guys care about me. There’s just a disconnect in my brain and I get in a weird headspace that’s hard for me to get out of. I can… I’ll try to rely on you guys more.”

Lance’s face melted into a soft smile. “Okay. And we can try to be more obvious in showing that we care. Maybe next year it won’t be a surprise party, yeah? We’ll let you know about it beforehand so you don’t accidentally miss it. Would that be good?”

“I… yeah. That would be nice.” Keith tentatively smiled back.

After a moment, Lance’s eyes widened and he reached into his pocket. “Oh yeah! Since I didn’t get a chance to give it to you earlier,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a relatively small, rectangular wrapped object. “Happy birthday! Here’s your present.” He handed it over to Keith with a wide grin.

He kept rambling as Keith slowly unwrapped the gift, “I got it last week when I went on a supply run with Coran! That’s why I volunteered. I mean I love Coran and all but I knew your birthday was coming up and I wanted to get you something. I wasn’t sure what to get you but then I saw this stall full of knives and stuff and I thought to myself ‘Hey, Keith really likes that one knife he has! I bet I can get him something from there,’ and I don’t really know a lot about knives or a lot about the one you have in particular, so I just had to trust the shopkeeper there. It’s nothing fancy, but I hope it’s the right…” Lance looked up at Keith, and trailed off when he saw that the other boy was crying again, staring at the unwrapped whetstone in his hands.

At that, Lance immediately started to panic, “Oh no, did I do something wrong? Is it a bad gift? I’m sorry-”

Keith cut him off with a watery laugh. “No, Lance. It’s perfect, I love it. Thank you.” The fact that Lance cared enough to think of him and get him such a personalized present was a gift in itself.

Lance beamed brightly. “I’m glad you like it! Now I’m not Hunk, but… can I also give you a birthday hug?”

Blushing slightly, Keith nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

Once he’d gotten Keith’s permission, Lance leaned over and wrapped the other boy up tightly in his arms. Keith hesitantly placed his hands on Lance’s back, and hooked his chin over his shoulder. He then, of course, had to ruin the moment by letting out a huge yawn.

However, instead of getting upset, Lance just chuckled, his chest vibrating against Keith’s pleasantly. “Let’s get you to bed, my dude. You’ve had a long day.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to see more about my writing or just to see me yell about things in general, you can follow me on twitter @foliedges! i also retweet a lot of klance art if ur into that. thanks for reading <3


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